Christians Walk Like Frosty The Snowman

You remember the Frosty song, don’t you. Part of it goes, Hippity hop-hop, Hippity hop-hop, look at Frosty Go! Well, while preparing for Sunday’s sermon on unity, I discovered an interesting fact. Church hopping statistics show that Christians are hippity hopping from their churches with regularity. One stat says that 25% of a Congregation will change churches within the next five years.

I suppose that some of those hoppers have good reason to switch. On the other hand, lots of web sites I found show that the idea of belonging to a church “family” is a foreign concept to most people today. Many attend three or four churches with regularity. They go to church, they aren’t the church.

It should be no wonder that evangelicals have a higher divorce rate than unbelievers. I know where they learned it! Commitment is not something that we feel comfortable teaching or practicing. We put our felt needs before others, and if we aren’t having our needs met, out we go. Gone are the days where we would try to fix it. We just leave.

Dodge motor company has an interesting commercial out for the Grand Caravan. Mom suggests that the family get in the car for a drive. Nobody wants to go, but they go anyway. The drive gives them a chance to connect with one another. The final scene shows the three kids, two teens and a younger brother, together on the tailgage. Sis says to her little brother, “Billy, I guess you are an okay brother.” He replies, “It’s Bobby.”

Connecting seems to be the first place to start in establishing a family atmosphere for a church. How do we accomplish that in a society where we are “lightly” connected in so many activities and places? If we don’t know Bobby well enough to keep his name straight, how can we ever be committed to him? I hope to explore some of this more in Sunday School this week.

2 Comments on “Christians Walk Like Frosty The Snowman”

I have often wondered, being active in the motorcycle community, why there is such a brotherhood of diverse people who can come together and be committed to each other who barely know each others name. If we are broken down by the side of the road, you can count on another motorcycle rider will stop to lend a hand. We all have different likes and dislikes as to what kind of motorcycle or color or style or sound that really cranks our motors but we all agree that it is the love of the open road and the feel of the bike under us that creates a common bond.

I think that too many christians focus on nitpicking each other and our preferences of worship style, song likes and dislikes, bible translation preference, how we use different terminology, and different backgrounds. We tend to gravitate to like minded people wherever we go and so it is no different in churches. Some times we simply spend too much time on the academic analysis of the thing rather then enjoying the ride. We should focus on our relationship with Christ first and then the commitment to each other will come out of the love for the Father. Then the rest will simply not matter.

It is the thrill of the ride not the analysis of the vehicle that will draw us closer together in this brotherhood of Christ. If we spend all our time tweeking our bikes and never get it out of the garage then how can we know the joy of riding.

There is nothing wrong with Church hopping! Church hopping is not a problem. It is a symptom. Rather than address the real problem, ministers try to treat this symptom either by enticing people to stay with the expensive bling of “relevant” programs and fanfare or by making people feel guilty with heavy handed sermons about “commitment”. Both of these approaches miss the mark big time!